Thursday, July 17, 2014

The people have spoken, and they're not done yet.

The FCC's network neutrality proceeding passed the 1 million comment mark today, further cementing its place as one of the most popular topics the commission has ever tackled.

The latest count provided by an FCC spokesperson was 1,030,000 comments, including those filed on the commission website and those sent to an FCC e-mail address (openinternet@fcc.gov) that accepts comments into the official record. This is the most for a single docket item.

FURTHER READING

"The next highest count for a single docket was theUniversal Service docket 96-45," which had 237,280 comments in 1996, FCC spokesperson Mark Wigfield told Ars.

Other topics have garnered more comments and/or complaints, however.

"Over 1.4 million complaints were filed in the Janet Jackson Super Bowl incident [in 2004], but there are never docketed comments in an indecency investigation," Wigfield said. "While the complaints are clearly an expression of interest by the public, they aren’t docketed comments on a policy matter in a rulemaking."

Another crazy one: "The false rumor that atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair had filed a petition at the FCC asking us to ban or restrict religious broadcasts [led to] over four million calls and letters in 1976 alone (even though she never filed such a petition). Clearly an expression of interest, but never a docketed proceeding," Wigfield said.

Two million comments previously came in on media deregulation. A 2003 article in The Wall Street Journal said, "In the months before the FCC voted June 2 to relax the television cap and other media-ownership rules, more than a million wrote the agency in opposition; more than a million others have written since."

The media ownership comments came in over multiple dockets, Wigfield said.

The network neutrality docket opened on February 19 this year, with the deadline to post initial comments expiring tomorrow. Another round of reply comments are due on September 10. The original deadline for initial comments was supposed to expire on Tuesday but was extended after the FCC's website was broken by the heavy traffic. The site had also gone down after comedian John Oliver called upon viewers to speak out against ISPs charging Web services for priority access to consumers.

The 1 million comments on net neutrality may represent well over 1 million people. "Some advocates have turned in documents with many signatures—which would count as one comment in the docket, but groups will cite X number of signatures," Wigfield said.